Never Too Old
by rhhgrt
Summary: The Weasley children have an unfortunate tendency to enter their parent's bedroom without knocking first. Most of them come to regret it. Oneshot.


**Never Too Old**

It was the Winter Holiday. Finally. Bill was quite certain that if he had had to spend one more day at school he'd have gone mad.

It was eleven o'clock at night, and Bill was rather hungry. After raiding the kitchen quite thoroughly, he decided to go moan at his mum about the lack of food. Keeping him fed was her job, after all.

He walked quietly to his parents' door—so not to wake his siblings—and turned the knob. He couldn't see much of anything, but he could hear things. Things that sounded oddly like his mother giggling.

"Why the bloody hell is mum giggling in a darkened room at this hour?" he thought to himself.

He squinted his eyes, hoping to be able to see more without actually having to say anything; something told him that it would be best to remain silent. Just as he was about to break his silent rule, a bedspring creaked.

At the creak of the bedspring, he knew. Bill closed the door and to his parent's room with a snap and fled to Charlie's room.

"Charlie, Charlie!" said Bill as he shook Charlie awake.

"Wasgoinon?" muttered a highly disgruntled Charlie from the depths of his blankets.

"I walked into mum and dad's room to ask mum for something," he began, his eyes wide with horror, "and they were…they were _shagging_. Luckily they didn't see me," he concluded with a shudder.

Charlie—suddenly wide awake—sat up in bed, his eyes too wide with horror.

"But they're, they're old," said Charlie in such a way as to imply that no person over twenty-five should be sexually active.

"I know," said Bill in a sort of horrified agreement.

Charlie looked at him with pity in his eyes.

"You wanna stay here for the night?" asked Charlie kindly.

Bill nodded. Charlie tossed him a blanket. Bill curled up under it, will the sound of his mother's giggle to leave his brain.

It didn't, though.

* * *

In the summer before Charlie's fifth year, the Hogwarts owls arrived at quite a late hour. The envelope felt rather thicker than usual.

He opened it curiously, wondering what was causing the difference. To his great surprise, and delight, a brand new shiny Quidditch Captain badge fell out of the envelope and into his palm. He stared at it for a moment or two before giving a loud "whoop." Once his whoop was through, he looked around rather guiltily; he hoped that he hadn't woken any of his siblings.

The first order of business, of course, would be to write to Dora with the good news; she'd be rather annoyed if he didn't tell her immediately.

"_Dora_," he wrote, "_You were right. I did get Quidditch Captain. It's BRILLIANT, you—_" there he broke off, deciding to inform his parents before finishing the letter. He did rather like for his parents to be proud of him.

He hurried down to his parent's room, and was relieved to see through the gap under the door that the lights were on. Well assured that he would not be waking them up, he flung open the door and burst in proudly.

He opened his mouth to tell them the happy news, but the words died on his tongue.

There were his parents. In their bed. Horizontal. With no clothes on. Their heads snapped towards him as they saw the door open.

They stared at Charlie. Charlie stared at them. After about a minute of this Charlie backed slowly out of the room. He could tell them about his captaincy in the morning.

As his hand found the doorknob, he heard his father's voice.

"Try not to slam it, Charlie."

He fled.

Once returned to the safety of his own room, Charlie paced back and forth for a while, wondering how on earth he was going to get the picture of his mother's bare upper body out of his head.

He decided to try to finish his letter to Dora. He crumpled up the beginning of his first letter, and started fresh. If anyone would understand his horror it would be her, probably.

Now that he thought about it, though, he didn't believe that she had ever seen her parents doing anything more than holding hands. Charlie was actually rather baffled by that; he knew that if he was with someone who looked like Mrs. Tonks he would do a lot more than hold her hand.

Charlie put down his quill. It wouldn't do to write to Dora while thinking about that.

* * *

Percy was about to go into his sixth year. His parents had entrusted him with his four younger siblings and sent him off to Diagon Alley for the day with a rather long shopping list. It was bound to take him hours, especially with Fred and George to deal with.

After about three hours, Percy decided to run back to the Burrow to drop off all the bags he was carrying; they had become unpleasantly heavy, and Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George couldn't have been less of a help.

He flooed back to his home, and strode into the sitting room to drop off his wares. He stopped dead at the doorway upon seeing his parents on the couch.

They were on the couch doing something Percy didn't even want to think about. After freezing up for a moment he rushed back into the kitchen, dropped off his bags by the table, let onto nothing when he got back to his siblings.

He never told his parents what he had seen, and they never realized that it had happened.

Fred and George sped into the sunset after their escape from Hogwarts. They said nothing, but grinned at each other victoriously every five seconds or so.

They finally touched down onto the lawn outside of their house. They looked at each other nervously; they hadn't quite planned this part.

"Right, so how do we break it to mum?" asked George.

"We explain to her that we know she wanted us to be in the Ministry, but we decided that that wasn't really our true calling in life," explained Fred extravagantly.

"And then we duck."

"Of course."

They nodded at each other and stepped through the front door. They walked through the ground floor, but their parents were nowhere to be found.

"Are they in their room, do you reckon?"

"Yeah, probably."

They hurried up the stairs, not exactly eager to inform their parents that they had left school, but impatient to get it over with.

Fred took a deep breath and pushed open the door. They both stopped dead upon seeing what their parents were doing. Their jaws dropped open and they looked at each other with identical expressions of mingled horror and amusement; the amusement eventually overcame the horror.

Grinning rather evilly at each other, they silently counted down to zero, and promptly erupted in yells.

"PHWOOAR!"

"OH YEAH DAD!"

"HARDER, FASTER!"

Arthur fell out of bed in shock. Molly screamed and proceeded to swear at them in a rather unpleasant manner. They decided that it was time exit the scene when Arthur threw a slipper at them.

They ducked out of the room rather quickly and sprinted down the stairs, each of them laughing rather hysterically.

Their amusement was rather short lived; they were soon joined by an extremely unhappy Arthur and a rather violent Molly.

Needless to say, the news of their departure from Hogwarts didn't go over very well.

* * *

Ron was very careful about where he went while home for the holidays. He had heard rather disturbing stories from Charlie and Bill about, and a cautionary tale from Fred and George, about what might happen if he forgot to knock on his parent's door. Having heeded this advice, Ron operated with the utmost care.

So, when he found himself drastically needing to have a talk with his parents about his unfortunate dating mishaps, he made sure to knock first.

He rapped three times on the door, and then waited.

"Just a moment, dear," his mother called. He wondered vaguely why she had addressed him as "dear" if she didn't know who it was, but then remembered that she tended to address everyone as "dear."

A minute or so later, the door swung open and he was greeted by his mother's smiling face. His father looked up at him and grinned rather knowingly at wife.

"At least one of them knows how to knock."

Molly smiled in agreement.

Ron—although he didn't quite want to dwell upon the implications of what his father said—was quite pleased by her words.

At least he could do something right.

* * *

Ginny wandered through the house, nearly in a daze. It was over. Everything— the death, the sorrow, the overpowering fear—it was all over. And she had Harry back, that just made everything ten times better than it already was.

On a complete and total whim, she ran to her parent's room to give them both another hug—she really was feeling quite celebratory.

However, when she opened the door, she was met with the same sight that all of her brothers except Ron had seen before her.

She really wasn't prepared to see that sort of thing, so she screamed and ran back to her room.

Arthur sighed to himself in consternation.

"Perhaps we should start locking the door, dear," Molly suggested rather breathlessly.

Arthur looked down at her sternly.

"Molly, I refuse to lock to door the door within the confines of my own home. The kids will just have to learn. I have faith. And even if they don't learn, nearly all of them have already moved out, so it's not really much of a big deal."

Molly opened her mouth to argue, but Arthur cut her off with a kiss. They could discuss it later, she supposed.

* * *

They were older now, but they had many grandchildren to keep them occupied. Molly and Arthur quit enjoyed grandparenthood. It had all the joys of parenthood but without the annoyances. They were rather sadistically amused when they imagined their now grown children having to deal with all of the things they had done as children.

Molly vaguely wondered from time to time if they locked their bedroom doors, but came to the conclusion that she rather disliked thinking about her children doing that.

She turned her attention instead to the conversation going around the table; her children were reminiscing about their childhood.

"Bill, remember that time you freaked out after you saw mum and dad doing it?" Charlie was saying, grinning rather evilly.

There was a moment of silence, and then nearly every person sitting around the table proceeded to look absolutely disgusted, and rather horrified.

Molly said nothing, but merely smirked at Arthur, who returned the look. Smiling to herself, she took a bite of chicken. They weren't too old for it. Not quite yet.


End file.
